Why fur is fashionable again

Sarah Macclrymack, a PA: 'Fur keeps me warm. I wear vintage, but not the new stuff. I'm a vegetarian.' Photo: Daniel Hambury

Nick Corrigan, 41, a management consultant: 'At home, I've got mink, racoon and fitch, which is like a ferret. Most of it's old. But I think it's essentially wrong. I used to protest outside fur shops' Photo: Daniel Hambury

Barbara Lowry, 83: 'I'm glad I got this mink coat. I treated myself last year – I sold a holiday home to pay for it. Minks are nasty creatures anyway. It's a matter for each individual to decide whether they wear it.' Photo: Daniel Hambury

Housewife Elvira Hurrel: 'If you're going to kill it and eat it, then you can wear it. People are wearing more and more fur. I was with a girlfriend today and she was off to buy a fur coat. And on the school run all the mothers are wearing fur.' Photo: Daniel Hambury

As temperatures dropped last month and the snow kept falling, I started noticing fur coats in my neighbourhood, the politically correct north London suburb of Crouch End. This is a place with an independently owned organic shop that still flourishes next to Waitrose, where campaigners wave petitions for Greenpeace and against factory farming, and a large population of foxes are sufficiently confident of their welcome to saunter across my road in daylight.

The furs that have suddenly sprouted around here are not the kind that you would see in Mayfair or Knightsbridge - the smooth minks of a Russian oligarch's wife or mistress, say - but vintage (in other words, decidedly second hand). I've spotted them on young mothers wearing Ugg boots, pushing buggies through the slushy streets, and on teenage girls in skinny jeans and red wellies; a constituency that up until this winter would have stuck to their usual uniform of Gap denim jackets or Uniqlo pea coats.

Clearly, it's not just a localised trend, because you'll observe a similar look elsewhere, while the street markets of Camden, Brick Lane and Portobello are doing a roaring trade in old furs for young women. This time last year, you'd barely have seen an animal pelt worn in public, unless it was by foreigners who think the British are sentimental.

Indeed, fur was one of the defining differences between London Fashion Week and Paris, New York and Milan: the British didn't wear it, but everyone else from a cold climate did. Now, according to the British Fur Trade Association, "there has been a significant growth in fur sales" in the UK, which is part of a global increase (worldwide sales totalled $13 billion in 2008, an increase of nearly 60 per cent compared to the end of the 1990s).

As you might expect, the British Fur Trade Association is also touting its wares as a "responsible choice": "Real fur remains a supreme example of a fashion product that derives from a wholly natural, sustainable resource, is long-lasting but ultimately biodegradable. Many 'fake' furs are manufactured with non-renewable petroleum based products… Real fur is a durable material - quite the opposite of disposable fashion."

The opponents of fur remain equally vocal. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is campaigning against Burberry for its use of fur, accusing the fashion house of being "synonymous with cruelty to animals". And the naming and shaming of fur-wearing celebrities continues: PETA's list of ''worst-dressed celebrities'' for 2009 has Madonna at the top, and also lambasts the Olsen twins ("Since fur adds 20 years and 20 pounds, maybe Mary-Kate and Ashley think their matronly wardrobe will deflect the gossip about bulimia"); Maggie Gyllenhaal ("Maggie has gone from being lost in her brother's shadow to being lost inside some really ugly fur coats"); and Elizabeth Hurley ("instead of flaunting the remains of animals, this faded siren might focus on the remains of her career").

Meanwhile, even though fur is creeping into the High Street (in rabbit-trimmings), as well as luxury fashion houses (including Marni, a label much-admired for its boho-chic credentials), there remains a wariness among magazine editors to be seen to support the fur trade.

Sam Baker, editor of
Red
magazine, says: "We don't shoot fur on
Red
. As far as I'm concerned it's cruel and completely unnecessary. I'm not a fan of vintage fur either - the animal still suffered. But also, I think the wearing of any fur at all, vintage or otherwise, anaesthetises the wearer. You're only one gold card away from a new fur coat if you've bought an old one."

Alexandra Shulman, the editor of
Vogue
, is less militant, but tends to avoid the use of fur in the magazine: "We have a no-fur policy, but the odd cuff and collar creep in. The last research I did a couple of years ago showed that people in this country are still broadly against the use of fur in fashion."

Whatever one's view on the rights and wrongs of wearing fur, there seems to have been an unspoken message in the last six or eight weeks that second-hand fur is becoming acceptable in cold weather. For this you can probably blame Kate Moss, who has been out and about in vintage fur, wearing it with the rock and roll insouciance for which she is famous. In doing so, she looks entirely different to a wealthy Milanese matron in a new mink; more like Venus in furs, quite possibly with very little on underneath.

At this point, I should make a confession, which is that at the end of November, with the prospect of a subzero sojourn in the Scottish Highlands, I went to my favourite second-hand shop and asked if they had a "warm coat". The word fur did not cross my lips - I am of the generation that grew up mourning the baby seals clubbed to death in snowy wastes on the other side of the world. During my time working for
Vogue
, fur did not appear on the fashion pages.

Nevertheless, when the owner of the shop appeared with a furry coat, I did not say: "Is this fake?" I did note that it was modestly priced (less than Topshop), handmade of an indeterminate material, unlabelled, and at least 50 years old. Since then, I have worn it on a daily basis, and slept under it, as well, on the coldest nights when the temperature in Scotland dropped to minus 18.

I suppose I've taken the coward's way out by not knowing its origin; nor do I want to run the gauntlet of animal rights activists, especially after discovering that a fashion editor friend of mine was targeted when she spoke out in favour of fur. "I got some very threatening letters," she says, "including ones that said, 'We know where you live, and where your children go to school.'"

Another friend in the fashion business wears her Italian grandmother's old fur coat, but avoids confrontation on the subject, despite feeling irritated by the inconsistencies awash in her own industry. "I can't understand people who'll buy clothes from Topshop, which still hasn't signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, or eat supermarket battery chickens, and then give me a hard time for wearing fur."

She's right, of course, but when did fashion ever flourish under the aegis of logic or consistency? Come the spring, fake leopard-spot prints will be back…